Imagine a day in the not so distant future. Uncle Sam wants you! Why? To be a bureaucrat. (picture from here)

Because of the fact we have not taken sufficient care to make certain our children learn what they should learn, more and more we and our children worry far too much about “succeeding” in this world. More and more we do not give enough care to the next.

What has become our idea of success? That’s a secure, good-paying job; a sexy spouse with a secure, good-paying job; a couple of clean, smart and healthy children; a house in a beautiful neighborhood; a car the screams upper crust, ….

In modern America, success revolves around the worship of four idols: self, sex, stuff, and state. That’s why the ultimate job is with the government, a job that comes with power, prestige, and a large, steady income.

When people worship self, sex, stuff, and state; ethics do not much matter. What matters is might. Do I have the power and influence to get what I want?

Do we have to imagine what a society composed of people who worship self, sex, stuff, and state? No! We merely have to study the wars of the last century and the perils of this century. Because we are so dangerous to each other, war has always been among our greatest perils. So it is I wrote TWO DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT ATTITUDES TOWARDS CONFLICT RESOLUTION. What we worship determines our moral values, and there are essentially two extremes, two entirely different worldviews.

Might makes right: when we do not love our neighbor, we regard our neighbor on as an object. Objects have no rights. Objects exist only to be exploited. When an object has something we want, then all that matters is whether we have the power to exploit that object.

Right makes might: when we love our neighbor, we want what is best for that person. Thus, we respect their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When love is mutual, we can achieve peace with relative ease. Then we seek to achieve peace by doing what is right.

So why talk about this again? When I read Life Debate ABC’s bymadblog, it occurred to me how well the controversies over slavery and abortion illustrate those two worldviews.

Those who believed in slavery — those who still believe in slavery — see others as objects to be used. The issue of exploitation is not so much a matter of law as ethics. Without sound ethical standards, the law is whatever those who want slaves say it is. Therefore, the Southern planters, determined to have and uphold their “right” to own slaves fought to extend slavery into the territories (twisting the Constitution with Dred Scott v. Sandford), eventually precipitating a war the president they rejected, dearly wanted to avoid.

Similarly, those determined to treat the unborn as objects found a here-to-fore unknown “right” in the Constitution (Roe v. Wade). Whereas the slave masters argued that their slaves were subhuman and that people had always owned slaves, the abortionists argued the unborn are just blobs of flesh and that women had always aborted their children when they found them inconvenient.

Yet some will say an unborn child is clearly not human and a slave clearly is human. Really?

It is legal to abort a child until the moment of birth. What makes that moment so special?

Does a six month old infant have the capacity to speak. Isn’t that child still dependent. Is it not an offense to the rights of the caregiver — the mother — if she is not allowed to dispose of “it” as she wishes.

Did you know it use to be common for people to sell their children, even themselves, into slavery? Impoverish people are almost useless. If someone has to take care poor people, what is wrong with making them slaves?

What about women? Don’t women have to be protected? Don’t most societies recognize women are inferior? Don’t lots of people abort babies just because they are female? Why should a puny, emotional woman be given the full rights of citizen? Only weak men, men who love their ladies, would even consider such a thing.

And the old? Who wants to live in a nursing home anyway?

Yet consider the irony. It is women who call themselves feminists who most vehemently argue for abortion, disdaining the unborn as fetuses. Is it not because of love that men are willing to treat women as their equals. What is loving about treating a baby, even at the moment of conception human, as an unwanted blob of flesh? Why reject such a miracle of life from a loving God?

Does anyone know when a human being acquires rights, even God-given rights? Is it the moment of conception? The moment of birth? At 18 or 21 years of age. Why don’t we abort teenagers? Surely, teenagers can be lots of trouble and expense. Until we choose to love each other as Jesus told us to love each other, do we have a good answer?

Post navigation

18 thoughts on “BIG BROTHER WANTS A BUREAUCRAT?”

Well said, Tom. I often shrink this debate down to “you either believe we’re created in His image or you believe we’re a clump of cells.” If we’re created in His image, then we are actually God’s property, His artwork, His children. If we are just a clump of cells, that there is little moral argument for why we should not be aborting babies, having the elderly put down, ridding ourselves of those who are not cost effective, assisting people with suicide, or protecting the weak and vulnerable in any way.

How we perceive one another is vitally important and you can see the manifestation of that all through human history. It is easy to kill or enslave people that aren’t perceived as fully human, as having been created in His image. We either belong to God or we’re just a random bit a biological goo that sprung forth from nothingness. We don’t respect the human dignity of those we don’t perceive as human.

Our president went to Japan to tell us that because of the atomic bomb we need a moral revolution. He says that because of technology we need a moral revolution. Yet the problem is in our hearts, not our brains. That’s why Jesus gave us a moral revolution two thousand years ago.

Jesus gave us a choice. We don’t have to accept His sacrifice. We don’t have to love God and each other. We don’t have to behave like our Father, like children of the Most High.

We can continue to behave like our father is Satan. We can accept heaven, or we can make our own hell.

Please be careful. Progressives, all of them, subscribe to a philosophy that will necessarily bring about the end of the United States as a Constitution-bound republic of free people.

Non-believers may be progressives, or may be (like most people) uninvolved and uninterested in politics, or they may be (like me) active Constitution-supporting conservatives.

If we elect Trump, as we’re essentially being forced to do, we are putting someone in this most powerful position in the world who is, indeed, “dangerously retrograde” despite his professing to be a devout Christian. He could start wars, even accidentally or out of a momentary pique, and he could intrude upon our liberties if it happened to suit his whim of the moment.

On the contrary, were you to elect me for example, you would have nothing to fear — you know from my activity here and my years of writing that I am a fierce defender of religious liberty along with all of the other rights that we have by natural law (or “Nature’s God” as Jefferson put it). And I would use our military only to defend the country’s interests overseas, rather than trying to turn every benighted place on the globe into a Constitutional republic. We sort of did that to the Palestinians, and they voted the terrorists into power and approved a constitution that mandates the death penalty for non-believers like me.

Iraq did exactly the same thing. We gave them the ability to vote, and they did, and their new constitution has a rule for me: Because I don’t think the way they believe I should be forced to, their new law condemns me to death.

You only condemn me as being “dangerously retrograde.” If you had the power to do so, to create and implement law, what would you have the law do to “dangerous” people like me?

What a man professes to believe about God matters, but what is in his heart matters more. Yet the first is more easily known than the latter. We can hear a man’s words. We can know of his professions of faith or of his lack of faith in God. We cannot easily discern what is in a man’s heart. We can only see his works.

Would I vote for atheist for president? It would depend upon what I could discern about his heart. Christianity teaches us to love God and each other. Some who call themselves Christian do not do that. Some Atheists, really Agnostics, say that because we cannot prove God exists they don’t know if He does exist. Still, some of these people earnestly love and care about other people.

So it is that when we consider who we want to vote for we have to examine each man’s record. The label a man puts upon himself matters less than what the record of his life says about him. Does he understand that it better to give than it is to receive?

I’m enjoying this discussion between Tom and Keith. Just one thing I want to say, from Keith, “He could start wars, even accidentally or out of a momentary pique, and he could intrude upon our liberties if it happened to suit his whim of the moment.”

Yes, yes he could but in theory that’s not supposed to happen. In theory only congress can declare war. Of course they haven’t bothered to do so since WW 2 and obviously we’ve been involved in several massive uh, non official wars since then. But technically the next president is not supposed to have war powers.

As to looking into people’s hearts, I think it was Bush senior who pointed out that if people could look into politicians hearts we’d tar and feather them all and run them out of town.

We don’t hold our leaders accountable to the Constitution, anymore, I fear. We could. We should. Someone wisely put it this way.

Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves. — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787 (from here)

Instead of electing people who insist upon our involvement, we now elect people who promise to do everything for us.

That’s probably my greatest concern with Trump. The man comes across as too full of himself. I just just wish he displayed a bit more honest humility. He needs to emphasize that if he is going to lead we must be willing to do the hard work of following, and that includes holding the people who lead us accountable.

If liberals all all about science and logic, then they should have no problem with slavery because it is a form of Darwinism: The strong overpower the weak, and the weak become the domain of the strong. Once could plausibly argue that, according to Darwin, the salves are simply assuming their natural place in this world.

Of course, no liberal will ever argue this point, which is admittedly ridiculous. Their wishy-washy moralizations allow them to pick and choose right and wrong.

The surprising thing about Liberal Democrat argument is that they are essentially emotional, their supposed logic and reason is so shallow it is basically window dressing.

What do their arguments come down to? It is for the children. It is for the poor. It is for the elderly. It is for (fill in the victim).

President Bill Clinton use to end all his arguments for special rights on behalf of victims with this unassailable pronouncement: “It is the right thing to do.” Which I soon begin to understand meant it was not the right thing to do. That man certainly knows how to appeal to our emotions, but he is just a good con artist.

If liberals all all about science and logic, then they should have no problem with slavery because it is a form of Darwinism: The strong overpower the weak, and the weak become the domain of the strong. Once could plausibly argue that, according to Darwin, the slaves are simply assuming their natural place in this world.

Darwinian selection is overridden by social action among humans; once culture gets involved, all bets are off. Darwin himself made this point.

In one of his few mentions of human “races,” Darwin warned that “the savage races” were under threat of extinction by “the civilized races,” not from any notion of natural selection. He also sneered at the idea of classifying these groups of humans as separate subspecies:

It may be doubted whether any character can be named, which is distinctive of a race and is constant … they graduate into each other, and … it is hardly possible to discover clear, distinctive characters between them.

He was not immune to the prejudices common to the day, but never attempted to use his notions to justify the oppression or slavery of blacks. He also pointed out that differences within groups that are called “races” are as much as differences between them.

Human societies keep their infirm and less-than-able people alive and in many cases able to reproduce, as a general thing. In a pure natural-selection world, these would not survive.

But as you suggest, progressives have indeed made this sort of argument about their racial superiority. At the time of the Scopes trial in which Darwin’s ideas were contrasted with Biblical Genesis literalism, standard issue textbooks at the time classified the human species into five races, discussing them from the most superior European Caucasian race to the most lowly, savage, and poorly developed Negroid race which was painted as incapable of assuming a proper place in society, and was destined for a permanent subservient role.

I just looked around the Internet for some passages from these old books. I see now that the searches that pulled them up a few years ago are now flooded with much more recent, much less obvious references to recent textbooks being accused of “racism”; these references are overblown and the real progressive racist textbooks are erased. Interesting.

The Scopes trial is commonly understood as being about teaching evolution in schools. That wasn’t against the law; evolution was part of the textbooks. The only distinction made was in explicitly applying this to Man himself. The statute prohibited State-supported schoolteachers who would “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” No problem with teaching every other aspect of evolution. And the fine for doing this was $100 (up to a legal maximum of $500).

The communists wanting to undermine Christianity had recently formed the ACLU, and they set up this trial, even advertising for someone to be the test plaintiff. Substitute teacher John Scopes answered the ad. They arranged for his staged citation, got a nationally famous defense attorney involved, and the trial was on.

At the time of the Scopes trial in 1925, Eugenics was rising as the new “in” thing, Margaret Sanger Slee’s organization to eliminate inferior populations (that would eventually become Planned Parenthood) was well under way, and progressives were stealing the word “liberal” that used to mean what conservatives stand for. We’re now relegated to using “classical liberalism.”

The upshot: It’s not Darwin to blame for slavery or to accuse of excusing slavery. American enlightenment began the drive to push slavery into extinction (it isn’t, yet), and progressivism arose in part as a counterpoint to this. And progressivism is capable of using anything as an excuse for anything.

Thanks for that addition. Did not know the law the Scopes trial overturned was so narrowly focused. I do know it infuriates lots of people when someone tells them we are descended from apes.

I don’t think the intention was to slam Darwin. It is unfortunate, but the survival of the fittest, which often is not well understood, is now called Darwinism, even when Darwin would not have supported what was being proposed.

I posted this on my own blog. In it, there is an image of Darwin, and a quote from him that is a reaction to the “survival of the strongest.” The other word, “fittest,” is often misunderstood. It did not mean “the most physically fit” (as we might think of “fit” today), it meant “the most appropriately adapted to the particular niche the organism occupies.” The most fit, in other words.

A butterfly that was slightly weaker but that had a better coloration might be the one that survives and lays more eggs, which might give rise to a new species if the mutation catches on. Eventually, these can no longer interbreed with the parent species, and a new species is born. This is called the Wallace effect.

Incidentally, there were two people developing this theory at the same time. When Darwin got a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace, realizing that Wallace had the same idea well-developed, Darwin panicked and rushed to get “Origin of Species” published. While we technically call Darwin and Wallace the “co-discoverers of the Theory of Evolution,” few indeed remember Wallace.

But Wallace, the “father of biogeography,” believed that every aspect of every living species was the result of natural selection — except the brain of Man. He would probably have been quite comfortable teaching in early 20th century Tennessee (the law was repealed in 1967).

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.